Tax for Herts County Council frozen for fifth year in a row

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Council tax will be frozen for the fifth year in a row after County Hall chiefs decided the annual bill for Band D properties should remain £1,118.83.

Had the figure gone up with inflation, those households would be paying about £169 more in the coming financial year.

Herts County Council gets the bulk of council tax payments, collected by Dacorum Borough Council, to help fund schools, social care, the fire service, more than 3,000 miles of roads and other services. The authority also plans to release up to £1m of contingency funding to tackle flooding.

The council will have made annual savings of £172m by the end of the next financial year – achieved by cutting staff, restructuring, negotiating contract savings and reducing management costs.

The council’s Lib Dem opposition says its alternative budget, backed by Labour, would have provided an extra £9m to improve roads, footpaths and cycleways as well as £3.3m to tackle flooding while still freezing the tax rate.

County Hall expects it will need to have made a further £107m of savings by financial year 2017/18